Social criticism in Chinese literature: techniques and styles used by a selection of leading writers from the 1919 student movement to the present day

Abstract

This paper will introduce six leading Chinese authors and focus on one of their major works, the stance they took against the society and government of the time, and the literary styles and genres they utilized to deliver their stories. The authors and works that have been included in this paper are: Lu Xun – The True Story of Ah Q / Lao She – Cat Country / Mo Yan – The People's Republic of Wine / Yan Lianke – The Four Books / Chen Xiwo – I Love My Mum / A Yi – The Perfect Crime. All of these writers have written very critically of China at various times – sometimes obliquely, more directly in other instances – and all have suffered censorship and other repercussions. In their writing styles they all mix farce, absurdism, surrealism , grotesquerie, exaggeration and literary realism to paint worlds that are in many ways dreamlike, where they create societies that, superficially at least, are distant from the contemporary China they are critiquing.